cover image Body and Soul

Body and Soul

Randolph Splitter. Creative Arts Book Company, $13.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-88739-171-2

Dark and dramatic, Splitter's novella and eight short stories investigate the perils of bigotry, the horrors of loss and the depressing mechanisms of broken homes and estranged families. More than five characters die in the novella alone, while those who remain cope with grief, outrage and poverty. The narrative tracks the lives of three disparate characters: Mole, an Asian American computer wiz; X, a tormented and wildly traumatized art student; and Rothschild, a Russian cab driver. Each endures innumerable hardships (Mole's mother and Rothschild's son die, etc.) before all three meet in a scene of impossible violence and fatalistic grandeur. These three men suffer endlessly, without purpose or apparent cause, and the world they inhabit is unforgiving and uncaring. This sad portrait might suffice were the trio's story not arrested in a pitch of despair. As it stands, Splitter leaves us with inky character sketches--grim outlines of people whose lives, touched by disaster, are only just beginning. The stories feel similarly truncated: unhappy students and husbands and wives disappear from view just as they begin to deteriorate or develop in interesting ways. (Dec.)